RE: [malware-list] [RFC 0/5] [TALPA] Intro to alinuxinterfaceforon access scanning

Press, Jonathan
2008-08-05T20:37:52Z

-----Original Message-----
From: Theodore Tso [mailto:tytso@mit.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, August 05, 2008 2:55 PM
To: Press, Jonathan
Cc: Greg KH; Arjan van de Ven; Eric Paris; linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org;
malware-list@lists.printk.net; linux-security-module@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [malware-list] [RFC 0/5] [TALPA] Intro to
alinuxinterfaceforon access scanning

On Tue, Aug 05, 2008 at 02:38:23PM -0400, Press, Jonathan wrote:
> Is your point that Linux and Unix machines are less vulnerable to
> viruses? If so, that's not relevant to my point at all. A Unix
machine
> can be a carrier, passing infections on to other vulnerable platforms
> (guess which one). An enterprise security system sees the entire
> enterprise as an integrated whole -- not just individual machines with
> their own separate attributes and no impact on each other at all.

Sure, but if that's the case, you don't need to have a blocking open()
interface. Having inotify tell your application that a file
descriptor that had been opened for writing has been closed
(IN_CLOSE_WRITE) should be quite sufficient.

[JON PRESS] I don't get the connection between what I said and your
point about not needing blocking open() interface. If I ftp into a
Linux machine and GET an infected file, you want FTP to go right ahead
and read it and send it to me over the wire?